• Tech Refresh Brings New RPG Features

  October 26, 2020 Alex Woodie

  There’s no denying that IBM has a soft spot for open source these days, but that doesn’t mean it’s given up on the ILE environment. In fact, IBM gave RPG programmers something to cheer about by including several new features in the language in the latest batch of Technology Refreshes.

  IBM introduced over a dozen new open source capabilities with the IBM i 7.3 TR9 and 7.4 TR3, which IBM unveiled earlier this month and which will ship in a few weeks. That new tech will definitely help IBM i shops tackle their business challenges, says Steve Will, the chief …

  Read more

• Profound and Connectria Hook Up in Cloud-Modernization Push

  October 21, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i modernization tool provider Profound Logic and Connectria, one of the biggest private cloud providers for IBM i, announced a strategic partnership last week. The goal of the union, representatives with both companies say, is to give their respective IBM i customers a leg up as they seek to streamline their IT systems.

  Matt Biegacki, the vice president and chief marketing officer for Connectria, and Michael Killian, the vice president of strategic accounts for Profound Logic, shared their thoughts on the partnership during a call with IT Jungle this week.

  From Profound Logic’s perspective, the partnership with …

  Read more

• Recovery Point Provides Another Option for Full-Service DR

  October 21, 2020 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to full-service disaster recovery firms, most IBM i shops are aware of IBM Business Continuity and Recovery Services (BCRS) and Sungard, the two giants of the space. But there’s a third, slightly smaller option that nevertheless should be on their list: Recovery Point Systems of Germantown, Maryland.

  Recovery Point was formed nearly four decades ago to serve the document storage needs of businesses and organizations near the nation’s capital. As tape storage took off, the company evolved its business plan and served as secure repository for tape storage, sort of a regional Iron Mountain.

  Today, Recovery Point …

  Read more

• Four Hundred Monitor, October 14

  October 21, 2020 Jenny Thomas

  It’s been said that “life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” I think most of us would be happy for a redo on 2020, but since that’s not possible, we can point to some signs of better days ahead by taking a look at IBM. Big Blue surprised us last week by splitting its managed infrastructure services business from Global Services and giving it life as a new, publicly traded company. And now CEO Arvind Krishna has set his target for growth (in our lead story below), which gives us a reason to be optimistic …

  Read more

• Network Security: Don’t Trust And Verify

  October 21, 2020 Rich Loeber

  When your system is connected to a network, you cannot always guarantee the integrity of the person at the far end of a network connection. If your system is connected to the Internet, ethics go out the window altogether. You have to assume that the person at the far end is a bad guy, then proceed from there. With this tip, we’ll outline an approach to this problem that may help you to focus in on how to deal with the bad guys wherever they may be.

  Internet bad guys generally fall into two categories, sneaks and bullies. The bullies …

  Read more

• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 42

  October 21, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  All is quiet on the Western and Eastern fronts as we await the delivery of the Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4 on November 13. The Tech Refresh Resaves will also be available at that time. Other than some nips and tucks in the IBM i PTF Guide, there is not a lot to report, but we do this every week to keep you up to date. From a system administrator point of view, knowing when nothing big is going on is almost as useful as knowing when there is a lot going on.

  To …

  Read more

• The Rest Of October’s Power Systems Software Announcements

  October 19, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The software stack in the Cognitive Systems division, which most of us still call the Power Systems division, is a lot wider and deeper than the IBM i stack, even though IBM i does represent a lot of the software functionality and generates a lot of the revenue stream for Power Systems machinery.

  In addition to the Technology Refresh updates for IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.3, which were announced on October 6 and which will be available on November 13, Big Blue also updated a bunch of other pieces of systems software that run on Power Systems, which …

  Read more

• Choosing The Language To Transform Your Applications

  October 19, 2020 Michael Killian

  Most of our customers are comfortable with RPG since it is the predominant language on the IBM i, and most are familiar with Java and .NET since those languages have been around for two to three decades. But many are not as familiar with Node.js.

  There are a lot of great resources available regarding Node.js, so I thought amalgamating that information into one concise article for ease of reference might be a better use of your time. There are so many resources out there to give context and meaning to Node.js, so I have put together a list of the …

  Read more

• Guru: Concerning The Stepping-On Of Feet

  October 19, 2020 Ted Holt

  It has come to my attention that once again I did not tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In Three Suboptimal I/O Practices, I said that a simple SELECT INTO was preferable to a cursor that fetches one row. It turns out that there is at least one situation in which SELECT INTO will not serve the purpose, and one has no choice but to use a cursor that fetches one row.

  The situation is this: the program must lock the fetched row for update. Despite its power and simplicity, SELECT INTO cannot lock …

  Read more

• As I See It: Another Modest Proposal

  October 19, 2020 Victor Rozek

  In 1729, responding to English indifference to chronic poverty in Ireland, Jonathan Swift wrote an essay called A Modest Proposal in which he suggests the Irish could sell their babies to the English gentry as food, thus addressing both the problem of Irish poverty and, presumably, the lack of meat variety in England. (I shouldn’t have to say this, but given the bizarre QAnon belief that elites actually drink children’s blood, it should be noted that Swift’s proposal was, you know, satire.)

  Well, with the country starting to resemble 1729 England updated for inflation, it’s time for another …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles